The Point Radio: HOW STUFF WORKS Heads To TV

The popular podcast HOW STUFF WORKS moves to a new medium early in 2013 when the Science Channel launches the HSW television series. We talk to the guys behind it on how they are creating a hybrid reality show/situation comedy, plus doing an episode dedicated to comic book movies. Meanwhile, KOJACK gets closer to a reboot and DC says goodbye to THE SPIRIT. Take us ANYWHERE! The Point Radio App is now in the iTunes App store – and it’s FREE! Just search under “pop culture The Point”. The Point Radio – 24 hours a day of pop culture fun for FREE. GO HERE and LISTEN FREE on any computer or on any other mobile device with the Tune In Radio app – and follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.

Transcript

Hello, it's Mike Raub. Welcome to The Point where all parts of pop culture come together. We start our look at some of the great new entertainment coming in the new year with How Stuff Works, a popular podcast that's becoming a unique television series. And we'll tell you exactly how that works.

Plus, did you know CoJack is coming back and DC says bye-bye to the spirit. Let's get to The Point right now. This is The Point, The Point Radio. Get The Point Radio. It's the age-old question, how does stuff work?

Well, it's one that's been answered for a few years now on our popular podcast produced by the folks at the Discovery Channel and hosted by Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant. Now, the guys are taking it to television with a series that will begin on the Science Channel in just a few weeks. We talked to Josh and Chuck and asked him, well, to start with the basics.

The premise of the show is sort of the semi-fictional life surrounding what we do for a living, which is podcasts. So the podcast itself will be interspersed throughout in the studio like a little Greek chorus. And then the fun fictional side of it is sort of like a workplace office comedy.

And we got a great cast and we're the only real dudes in there. Everyone else are really talented, trained actors. Who are so talented, they make us look like we're able to act. So it just shows the fictional hijinks that we get into that surrounds the podcast that we do.

And it is a scripted comedy, which is new for Science Channel. It's new for any Discovery Network. But it's also like the crux of it, the plot is science driven. So like whatever topic we're covering in the podcast is having some sort of application to like our work life or our lives in the show outside of the podcasting.

So that's the premise of it. So how did this all start? Well, we were hired as writers for HowStuffWorks.com, which is owned by Discovery Channel and writing articles and then our boss approached Josh with an idea to deliver the information we have in the articles in podcast form.

And they sort of rotated host and then got us together and the show kind of took off from there. Where do they get the information? So we would love if we could like go and do a lot of like firsthand research where we're like going to the source, like talking to like illustrators or even like fans, that

kind of thing. But most of our research has to be done just for time's sake on the Internet. Fortunately for us, there's a growing and growing body of really reliable stuff out there. We're not running into bad information.

One of the episodes, the guys explore superhero movies and take them apart to find out, well, exactly what makes them work or not work. It's sort of the history of comic book movies from Flash Gordon in 1936 to Jonah Hex. And even beyond, because we mentioned the Avengers. Yeah, yeah, the Avengers made it in their underwear.

But it's I mean, it follows the arc of history, but also, you know, the larger rivalry between DC and Marvel and, you know, who was making moves when and who was just kind of sitting around in their butt. And why are some of them so awesome and why do some of them suck so bad? We actually ones that are so awesome, do they eventually sequel out to the point where they

suck so bad? Yeah, we kind of created just from researching this stuff because I mean, like that's what we do. We're not experts in any of this. I'm not a comic book expert or a movie expert or an expert in the human skeleton or anything

like that. We just research it. This is a pretty good example of that. So we just started digging into comic book adaptations and learned quite a bit. So we're just kind of outsiders kind of looking in and getting, I think, probably like a pretty

good perspective of the whole thing because we're not indoctrinated in that in the sense that we would be if we were comic book fans. And so to watch the rivalry and to kind of get an understanding of what makes a good comic book adaptation just from researching it rather than just knowing, having this kind of dogma of coming at it from a dogmatic approach, I think I hope it'll kill.

So with all the research, what do they actually find out? I think the one thing I came away with is that there is nothing that can stop that Hollywood train from pumping these things out. And then for every Jonah Hex that bombs and they lose hundreds of millions or tens of millions of dollars, I don't know if the budget was on that, there's an Avengers that makes

up for it and says, you know what, we're going to keep putting money into it and we'll have two great Spider-Man movies and then the one that kind of stinks and then we'll reboot that into a whole new thing. How Stuff Works, the podcast is easy to find on HowStuffWorks.com and look for the new television series coming in a few weeks on the Science Channel.

The Flight Radio. I'm going to have to hustle and the hustle. Let's get into a little bit of pop culture. According to DC's co-publisher, Dan DeDio, the company will no longer have the rights to the pulp characters that were pretty much in the forefront a couple of years ago when

DC began their first wave series and one designed by creator Brian Ezarello. These include Doc Savage, The Avenger and also The Spirit as well. No word yet on if another publisher will pick up the rights to these, although that seems pretty obvious and more than likely the front runner would be Dynamite Entertainment for this.

Of course, also in question, the future of The Spirit Archives, which DC has been publishing for quite a while. 25 volumes are already out there, some of which are out of print and pretty hard to find and no word yet on whether that project will ever get completed. Jack Black's production company, Electric Dynamite, has teamed up with Shine America

to produce a new comedy web series for the new year called Ghost Girls. It features a lot of cameos too from Black, Jake Johnson, Molly Shannon and a lot of other folks as well. It's a story of two young female Ghostbusters and it'll run about 12 episodes so far. There's already a Facebook page up if you want to check that out.

By the way, Ghost Girls is spelled G-H-I-R-L-S just in case you get confused. The series premieres on Yahoo's screen sometime in the spring. More and more, it looks like it's a Doctor Who Christmas sci-fi has picked up the exclusive broadcast rights in the US to the Doctor Who spin-off series K9 and they're going to run all 26 episodes in a marathon on Christmas Day starting at 10 in the morning till 11

o'clock that night. Same day, by the way, of course, that the Doctor Who Christmas Special for the year premieres on BBC America. Did you know there's a movie project out there set to reboot CoJack, the 1970s television series starring in the late Telly Savalas and did you know that Vin Diesel seems to

be in the lead to play CoJack in this rebooted film? Well, how about this? The guy said to write the movie Neil Purvis and Robert Wade who most recently did Skyfall, the James Bond film that didn't do too bad for that franchise. That's pretty much everything on the project so far still to come, a director and of course

then a production schedule. Hey, do you Hulu? Well, if you don't, probably somebody you know does. It was a great year for the content provider. Hulu Plus subscribers doubled in 2012 rising to over 3 million.

There's a lot more to watch too. Content on the service increased by 40% this year and advertisers seem to be pretty happy as well. Over 1,000 new advertisers joined Hulu in 2012 with an increased profit of about 28%. So Barbara fans are getting a holiday present a little early.

If you remember just about a year ago, ABC canceled the long running series All My Children and One Life to Live and then it was talked that a company called Prospect Park would resurrect those shows as online series as well. Contracts were signed and well things were set to premiere not too far after the start of the new year and then it just all fell apart.

Well now Prospect Park says things are back on track. They've made a deal with SAG and AFTR that could bring these series back online as soon as late January, not far from right now. Sources are also saying that a number of the original stars from both of those canceled ABC series are in talks to return to their roles.

Time for the late night wars to rear their ugly head again. Well Jay Leto's contract with NBC is set to expire in a couple of years in 2014 and who's in line for the job? Well sources say it's Jimmy Fallon. Allegedly talent agents have quietly contacted NBC to find a new late night host who would

take over Jimmy's show should this whole thing come together. No word yet on whether Carson Daly would be possibly in the running for that job. That does it for the podcast but you know you can stick with us for more Pop Culture 24 hours a day. Listen at GetThePointRadio.com on your desktop or if you want to follow us on your iPhone

or your iPad we have a free app available in the iTunes app store. Just look under Pop Culture in The Point. Check us along on your droid and your blackberry too with TuneIn Radio. In the meantime well here's how the podcast goes for the next couple of weeks. We'll be back right on Christmas Eve with our anniversary special and then one more

time before the end of the year to wrap up what we think was hot and not in 2012. And then of course right after that back with our usual twice a week cast on great websites like ComicMix.com and MichaelDavisWorld.com. The media never stops and we don't either. Catch us there on The Point Radio on Facebook and on Twitter and you can always write us

at ListenAtGetThePointRadio.com and subscribe to this podcast as well in the iTunes podcast directory. See you back here in a few days.